“He asked for a divorce while his release was still leaking down my thighs, so I divorced his head from his body.”

  I turned over another dead human; this one at least had been cleanly run through. I dipped my cap in the little amount of blood that was there.

  "I…what?"

  That one had died early on; pity. I looked up to my partner. He realized the same thing, but looked stuck. His mouth hung open, exposing crooked, yellowed teeth.

  There wasn't a lot of room for pleasant conversation while one was turning over bodies left during a Blood Rite, but there was space for dark humor, of course. Such macabre indulgences were what kept my coworkers going.

  "That's unfortunate," Stuart said.

  He was probably holding back. "But again, if you're going to stab humans, the least you could do is finish the job."

  Stuart, on the other hand, was more than willing to finish it if he had to. He didn't want to, but the tall, dark fae man was going to live up to the letter of the deal. But right now, he had other concerns for me.

  "I understand that you're still working through your feelings about that. Can you help me unstick this cart, please? It's got too much mud on the rear wheel, and I don't want to break anything."

  I placed my palms on my hips. "You've been trying to get me to answer your leading questions for a while. I tell you why I'm divorced and you clam up."

  "Just help me with the cart."

  The thing about having three carts but numbering them oddly meant that he could pretend to have more parts. This wasn't exactly the right way to run a business, but it wasn't for me to figure out. I just had a job to do.

  Stuart had paid me to show up and remove corpses from a previously undisturbed nature preserve. He had also spent a week setting up the trials according to the court's specifications before hiring me. He knew he would need help with this year's crop.

  Once the cart was freed, I started moving cautiously, taking time, much to my appreciation. My feet carried me back towards the well-trod path, away from the staging area where it had gotten muddy.

  Mud was an ever-present problem. I was able to get away from the other workers and make my way to where the actual work would be done.

  The vital task of moving bodies from a holy site or a blood rite was never really covered in any of the romance books that I read when I was a little girl.

  I pulled my bulky, old cart forward. All I could think about was the next step.

  As soon as I saw a dead fae or human, I would have to bodily lift them up and put them in the back. The contract was exacting in so many ways, save for one. It let me dress up in the most utilitarian fashion possible. Black culottes and a white blouse, cut off at the arms, complemented my red cap.

  Underneath it, I wore a brown face mask.

  The mask was designed to cover the bottom half of my face so I wouldn't inhale any of the toxins released by dying supplicants. I knew enough about the men in charge to take them seriously. Seriously, but not in many cases literally.

  They had given the company specific instructions about the cleanup. There was a five-minute anecdote about a prince feigning death in a trial recently, which had gone on to become an internal incident. One of the courts had lost a lot of clout because of that.

  The courts’ representatives had countered such humiliation with anecdotes about how many men and women had died during these blood rite cleanup events.

  For however many coins they paid, it always felt like my company would barely break even, but that was not my problem today. Today, my problems were the ones that stuck around. I passed another set of pine trees and found the next corpse of the afternoon.

  There were so many corpses. Nearly half the entire force, over four hundred Fae, hadn’t survived the trials to earn the next title. Rather than letting them serve out the rest of their term at the wrecked hold, the masters decided only those with tokens would advance.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It was an off-putting practice. Seeing men and women at the peak of their careers, top soldiers and athletes ready to take on the world, tossed away like sunflower seeds felt like a waste.

  Some of them even looked attractive.

  I lowered myself down and, remembering the instructions, braced the body of the man—because of course it was a man. He'd been driven through with a short knife and had bled out.

  I briefly touched the blood with my cap. The thrill was there. I paused for a long moment.

  The blouse they'd given me was technically disposable. I didn't need it.

  It was thin enough that I wouldn't overheat in the tropical heat, and it was something they could wash and they were used later once it had been thorough by someone who knew the healing arts well.

  That definitely wasn't me. They would be suspicious if I didn't show up with at least a little blood. Stuart knew that I was a red cap, but I didn't know how much he knew about us.

  Seeing a dead human, I scanned the area in case another had been involved and fallen nearby.

  I nervously checked to make sure that my medical mask was in place and was relieved to feel it there.

  Even though I could feel my breath moving behind the mask, touching it was still reassuring..

  One could only hear so many stories about the aftereffects of cleaning up from a war before one took it to heart. Farther along, I found signs of another battle—a trail of blood cutting off toward the trees. Someone had either come from or fled that way. I knelt to examine the marks.

  Many of the men and women who set off on this expedition had come barefoot or in only sandals. Due to the climate, it made sense for them to want to avoid the hot sand that baked under the sun. They weren't shaded by nearby pine trees.

  I left the main path and followed the line of footprints, trying to see where the one who’d bled out had gone.

  Of course, they were not going to make things easy for me.

  They never would.

  It wasn’t long before I lost the trail. I paused, scanning the ground and adding another mark where the signs had faded. The cart was still visible behind me…

  It was easier to see bright red blood among the leaves. The numerous bright leaves and plants gave this sea of islands a warm and inviting feel. One almost forgot how far they were from civilization. The lack of freshwater was a problem, though.

  Whoever had gone this way had left a water skin. That was not going to benefit them. Much. Doubt that they would survive very long. With it? It was questionable if they were still alive anyway.

  The rules of the blood rite, as explained to me, were that no one was allowed to live if they had been cut. This was the kind of event that I longed for.

  I knelt, touching my red cap to a freshly bloodied leaf.

  This was the freshest of any of the blood that I had come across thus far. They might even be alive.

  I sped up. There was a chance that I would have to be the one to end them.

  The possibility of that alone warranted a half run as I continued down the path. The jungle opened up to a small clearing. It hadn't been on any of the maps, perhaps because it was so small.

  There he was, or perhaps I should say there they were.

  A brown haired, tall man stood over a bloody, beaten Fae with blonde hair. He glistened as if he had run all the way to the pond from a long distance. I paused at the edge of the jungle, not wanting to step in.

  The man didn't have a mark on him. He was either an untouched fighter or he'd gotten turned around too many times. My money was on him suffering head trauma resulting in the latter…But the way he glistened and how his muscles rippled told the story of a man who had come here with a singular purpose.

  He removed a blade from the fae. I gasped, and he saw me.

  He placed a finger over his mouth.

  "You! The blood rite is over! What are you still doing here with…" I said.

  That was when I realized that this defeated fae, his quarry? His competition? They were still breathing. I would fix that quickly. There was something that the man was lacking, though.

  He didn't have any of the markings of the competitors. There was something about him.

  "I'm sorry, who are you?" he said, cleaning off his knife.

  I gasped. He was using his pant leg. That would not do. I hustled over to him and grabbed his knife. He didn't offer any resistance.

  "Usually, a lady asks for a knife."

  It was still covered in blood, so I reverently began to clean it off with my cap.

  "This is such a waste of good blood. You..."

  I looked down, and the man’s victim was still breathing, though it was apparent that a lung had been punctured. The wheezing was too much for me.

  "Help…me…" he croaked. Both of his eyes were bloodshot.

  "Gladly," I said, slamming the knife into his neck.

  The look of surprise in his eyes was delicious. He growled, and I took the opportunity to saturate my cap with the fresh blood.

  These kinds of things didn't happen often, so you had to take advantage of them.

  The man had jumped back several feet.

  "How did you—? Why did you..."

  Ah, he was one of those. I might need to act normal to get into his good graces, but…